Abstract

This article analyses the question of what news and news values are as well as the handling of church news in daily or weekly newspapers. The author deems the norms for news as accepted and applied by these papers to be acceptable from a Christian ethical point of view. In his opinion there is no need for conflict between church and newspaper in this regard. Conflict may, however, arise when it relates to the construction of news or a practical application of these values in a specific news report. A case study on such a report in the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper, Rapport, confirms this observation. This report focuses on houses of DRC Welfare in the Free State which have been sold to ministers of the Dutch Reformed Church.